in other lands, where other songs be sung
by Pencilwalla
Summary: [dsod alternate ending] 'I won. Without Atem...I did it.' It should have been a good feeling, but instead it hurt. Because if he could do it on his own, then he didn't need Atem anymore.


_I did it,_ Yuugi thought wildly. Aigami — if that thing was still Aigami — clamped his hands over his cubic eyes and staggered backwards. The darkness was fading, beams of light piercing the red sky. Beside him, Kaiba's body was reforming in a swirl of shadows. Yuugi knelt and checked him for a pulse; it was steady.

 _I won. Without Atem…I did it._

It should have been a good feeling, but instead it hurt. Because if he could do it on his own, then he didn't need Atem anymore. And if he didn't need Atem anymore, then that thin sliver of hope Yuugi had been nursing was gone, too. That no matter what he'd said to Kaiba, he'd believed that maybe if he tried hard enough, wanted it badly enough, closed his eyes and prayed…maybe a door would open, and they could meet again.

But he'd been right all along. Atem was somewhere beyond his reach now, and Yuugi would have to live with it.

Yuugi looked around. He caught sight of Jounouchi and Anzu and Honda and Bakura in the stands, rubbing their eyes and looking around in confusion as normality reasserted itself. It was over, again. Maybe now he could have a regular life. Maybe now he would —

He didn't see the shadows curling around his ankles until they seized him. Yuugi opened his mouth to scream, to warn Kaiba, but it was too late. The sound came out half-formed as he was pulled through.

They were in a dark place.

Yuugi woke up on the ground, or at least, he thought it was the ground. In the void of what he thought must be the Shadow Realm, everything looked the same. It was black and purple and formless in all directions. Yuugi could see through his hands.

Kaiba was beside him, slowly getting to his feet in a way that suggested he was in pain but working very hard to conceal it.

There was a laugh, coming from nowhere in particular. It was not Aigami.

"Are you all right, Kaiba-kun?"

"Fine. Where the hell are we?"

"Looks like the Shadow Realm."

"Tch." Kaiba mumbled something under his breath. "What was that thing?"

Kaiba had to be worried if he'd reduced himself to asking Yuugi questions.

Yuugi realized then that the Puzzle he'd been wearing around his neck was gone. He clutched at his chest, but there was nothing, not even the chain. Over the past six months, he'd trained himself not to reach for it, not to run his fingers over the links, not to trace the edges of the pieces. And here he was, six months later, and he had been wearing the Puzzle — Atem's Puzzle — and he hadn't even noticed it was missing.

Even facing certain death — the laughter was getting closer — Yuugi felt worse about that than about anything.

The Thief King and Zorc were supposed to be gone. What was it in the Ring that made it evil? Were the souls trapped inside the gold merely angry? Had holding Zorc inside it merely corrupted it? It would be nice, Yuugi thought, to know what he was about to fight.

He was still wearing the new duel disk. He touched his deck, feeling some nameless power flow through the cards, and shut his eyes.

"Get ready," Kaiba murmured.

Yuugi could hear the leather creaking as he moved.

It was getting colder. The air was crackling. _Any minute now,_ Yuugi thought as he prepared to draw, _any minute now —_

Something curled around his wrist.

 _Be devoured._

Red flared behind his eyelids.

There was light, light everywhere, golden and warm and rich. Hot air rushed across Yuugi's face as he threw up a hand to shield his eyes.

A silhouette was in front of him, all the details cast into shadow by the light, but Yuugi knew that shape, that hair, that stance, had seen in his dreams, had seen it in the mirror —

He opened his mouth, but the words wouldn't come. The figure moved towards him.

It was him.

Atem.

He was dressed as he had been the last time Yuugi saw him, thought his skin was dark again and he was wearing the golden crown from the Memory World.

He was smiling. It was the most beautiful thing Yuugi had ever seen.

There was a long moment where nothing happened. If he could have frozen time, in that moment, Yuugi would have.

Behind Atem, the light dimmed. Yuugi saw a hole in the void, with a slice of blue sky inside it, and realized that what he was seeing was Kaiba's stadium. There, on the stage, were his and Kaiba's bodies.

 _I should go,_ Yuugi tried to say, but his throat was locked.

And then Atem lifted a hand, and Yuugi took a step forward, and then they were in each other's arms, pressed together, and then Atem's mouth found his, somehow, even though Yuugi had closed his eyes and knew without looking that Atem had closed his.

He was everywhere, and nowhere. He was everything, and nothing. The only parts of him that seemed to exist were the ones that were touching Atem — his lips and his hand on Yuugi's back and his fingers in Yuugi's hair and the feel of Atem's arm against his palm and their stomachs hot against each other through their clothes and somewhere the world might have been ending and _I was wrong,_ Yuugi thought wildly, _this is the moment where I'd stop time if I could._

How ridiculous, that Yuugi had spent months constructing speeches and fantasies about all the things he'd say, and in the end he was saying nothing at all.

It was too perfect to last. Atem turned his head, and Yuugi sighed unhappily as Atem whispered into his ear, his voice exactly the way Yuugi remembered it, and then they weren't touching anymore and Yuugi didn't dare open his eyes. He was certain, if he looked at Atem, he would never be able to stop.

Instead he blindly groped until he grabbed onto Kaiba's arm, and then he ran back into the real world.

Behind his eyelids, he could still see Atem's smile.

"What did he say to you?"

Yuugi turned around.

"Kaiba-kun." It was rare to see Kaiba on the streets of Domino City. He preferred, as far as Yuugi could tell, to not mingle with people.

Admittedly, in Kaiba's defense, Yuugi had been studiously avoiding his phone calls, surprise visits at the shop, and on one occasion his helicopter landing for three weeks. He had known that eventually he would have to face Kaiba.

It didn't mean he had to like it.

"What did he say to you?"

"Nothing," Yuugi blurted.

"Don't lie to me."

"It was private."

"Private? It was private? How dare he," Kaiba said. He loomed over Yuugi. "How dare he ignore me, just to — "

Yuugi winced. He couldn't say that he regretted anything that had happened, but it had to be galling for Kaiba, one of the most wealthy, influential people in the world, to be ignored by the only person who Yuugi knew for certain he regarded as an equal opponent.

"I'm sorry," Yuugi offered.

"I don't need your pity." Kaiba stared off to the side. "I need to defeat him."

"You can't."

"Excuse me?"

"It's over, Kaiba-kun." Yuugi closed his eyes. "He's gone."

"He came back before."

"He didn't come back. We went to him." Yuugi hesitated. "The place where he is now…it's not somewhere the living can go."

"Is that what he told you?"

The desperation in Kaiba's voice hurt.

"Don't be afraid."

Kaiba started.

"What?"

Yuugi turned back around, so that Kaiba wouldn't see his tears. "Don't be afraid," he whispered, and wished he could still speak with Atem's voice. "I am _always_ with you."


End file.
